


persephone's in hell

by Gretahs



Series: we came outside and saw the stars [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Families of Choice, Force-Sensitive Finn (Star Wars), Ghosts, Gratuitous Artistic Liberties, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, PTSD, Slow Burn, Star Wars: The Last Jedi Fix-It, we're remixing this shit babey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-22 04:44:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21295487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gretahs/pseuds/Gretahs
Summary: This is what he dreamed: a world on fire.
Relationships: Finn & Rey (Star Wars), Poe Dameron & Finn, Poe Dameron/Finn
Series: we came outside and saw the stars [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1535141
Comments: 17
Kudos: 88





	persephone's in hell

**Author's Note:**

> a lot of things happened in my life since i last posted here; i got kicked out of home, finished school, moved in with some amazing people, and adopted a terrible cat. but one thing _hasn't_ changed, and that's my infinite dislike for everything in the last jedi.
> 
> so here i am, two years on. beating the giant horse.
> 
> this was started in 2017, and then abandoned soon after because i was depressed and disillusioned with star wars and also my life. its a shame, because i lost a great people that i'd met through writing. hopefully, something will build back up
> 
> the rules for this rewrite were simple: roleplay that i was an underpaid disney employee who at least had to incorporate some elements of canon from tlj, while changing it just enough to make it (in my opinion) less egregious. did i succeed? eh, who can say
> 
> kudos if ur still reading this btw

_ The **FIRST ORDER** is on the verge of defeat. _

_ Though Starkiller Base has been destroyed, the peaceful **REPUBLIC** is in scattered ruins, and General Leia Organa fears retribution and open war from Supreme Leader Snoke. She hopes that the return of her brother, Jedi Master Luke Skywalker, will restore peace to the galaxy.  _

_ But her **RESISTANCE** is already under threat: the Dark Side is trying to awaken an old evil, seeking to destroy the Light forever… _

—

There’s something so beautiful about looking at space through the scuffed glass of a T-70 windshield.

Everything looks a little smudged: the stars bleed into each other just enough to look like patterns of light on a pool of rippling water, the kaleidoscope of ionized clouds changing in colour and tone depending on how Poe tilts his head. His mother once described it as the reflection of a clear night sky on a bottomless lake, as they sat beneath the tree on Yavin IV with her helmet pulled down over his eyes.

If he listens, past the familiar staccato vibration behind him and the white noise chatter over the comm and the sound of BB-8 humming something to itself, he can almost hear the tuneless silence of the galaxy, something he used to crane his ears to hear back when he had two feet on the ground on Yavin IV. It’s the gaping nothingness that sings to him, past the planets and systems and traffic, that someday he’ll take his hands off the joystick and float away into the abyss to find out where that song is calling him to.

Now, though, they’ve entered the debris, and that conversation fades into a concentrated quiet, and he flicks on his responder again. Even now, days later, the open, jagged wound the New Republic left behind is bleeding and raw. Starkiller did its job well: it pulverised Hosnian and her sister planets to dust, dragging fleeing ships back with a bright red, stinging grasp, and ate them all to ash. Space here is thick with dust and smouldering sparks, but here and there Poe can catch glimpses: of houses, buildings, ships, trees, moons.

Of _bodies_.

“All clear in Sector Three,” Testor says, her voice broken in grief, and to his left he watches as Blue Three swerves around a sphere of cracking, scorched marble.

“All clear in Eighth Sector,” from Iolo.

Karé says: “Nothing at Courtsilius – Sector Thirteen –” before cutting herself off with a horrible gasping sound as the hull of a broken starship floats past, wires idly buzzing with the ghost of life, and from its open rim are floating hands and hair and lekku and faces reaching outwards, nails frozen over and blue and unfeeling. Someone gags, and Poe realises as he bends over it’s _him_, and he has to choke back bile and tear his helmet off his head, gasping through the recycled air.

His eyes are shut, so all he can hear is a chorus of horror as his squadron grieves. A fleet of escapees, it seems, trapped in time and unable to decay. Rows and rows of transports torn in two: not warships but civilians, old and young and _children,_ running for their lives. Poe can hear BB-8 whistling in a worried tone behind him, a comforting sound of _Friend-Poe Friend-Poe Friend-Poe Friend-Poe Friend-Poe,_ but all the same he keeps his eyes screwed shut until the nausea passes, until he can rub furiously at the wetness on his cheeks without fear of vomiting at the sight. When he pulls his visor back down its to silence, because they’ve flown into a graveyard.

They’ve been tasked with locating any survivors, Poe knows, and that General Organa wishes to keep hope alive no matter what, regardless of the adversity, but in that moment, as he sees screams of silent agony and terror and desperation, the despair is almost crippling.

_As long as there’s light we’ve got a chance_, he thinks to himself. The heat of the attack had ignited Hosnian Prime’s core, so that even those furthest from the point of impact had been incinerated when their planet had erupted from beneath their feet. From D’Qar, it still shone as a temporary sun, but from this distance it had long since spluttered out into a swirling black pit that caught more than it broadcast. He’d been looking up at Raysho from the tarmac just that morning, leaning backwards and watching as five hundred billion lives lived on in the past. Poe had almost expected to fly out and somehow find the Republic still intact, that Korr Sella would greet them with a sharp smile and a quick word for Leia in the atmosphere, that he could pass beneath the clouds and feel the earth beneath his feet.

Space is beautiful, but like an ocean it didn’t discriminate between those it swallows whole.

His comm clicks back on.

“I’ve got something,” Paige says. She’s speaking past her filter unit so her voice is mechanised and flat, but Poe can still tell that she sounds confused. Disturbed.

Poe frowns. “This is Black One, please clarify.”

“Starboard side, at your three o’clock.” Karé this time, and he watches as she carefully flies the transport to their right, away from where they held in tight formation. Her voice turns panicked. “Poe– _Poe –”_

“Force there’s _more_,” Iolo says, his voice hushed, and as a line of debris rolls past him, Poe finally sees; if the junkyard they had passed through was a graveyard, then this was a battlefield.

The carnage seems endless, a forest of shrapnel and metal bent into circles in the heat, shattered glass shining like crystals past the broken bodies of hundreds, _thousands_, of people, both military and bystander alike. He’s holding the joystick in both hands, but his fingers are slick with sweat and frozen in his gloves, and he can’t tilt it forward. He’s stuck, peering out that scuffed windshield at a field of indescribable horror, and somehow he can hear himself keep speaking.

“I need a scan,” says the stranger with his voice, “right now, immediately. Paige? If there are survivors, if _anyone_ survived out here we need to locate them and – and get them on the damn transport. Iolo, Testor, I need a broader scope of the damage. Is this the fleet? Is there a possibility that we missed–” He stops, and blinks furiously, jerking Black One suddenly sideways to BB’s sudden loud beeps, and pulling up closer to the wreckage of a T-85, peering as far forward as the straps on his suit will allow. “– that we…”

“Poe?” Karé asks. She can’t get close to him because of the cumbersome size of her craft, but he knows she’s halted behind him, ready to engage, and he doesn’t turn to check. “Poe – Poe _what do we –?”_

“Run a diagnostic on that ship,” he says, and BB burbles out a concerned reply. “No, wait, hang on. I said _hang on Paige!”_

There’s a ringing in the helmet, but all he can do is stare forward past the glass, past Black One and his team and the wreckage and the death and the fire so hot it still smoulders in space, as a giant, looming shadow falls over them.

“Iolo.” His voice is cracked and almost a whisper. A line of sweat curls around his jaw, and down his throat. He doesn’t look away. “Iolo, get them out of here _now.”_

_“Poe –!”_

“You need to go _now!”_

“The civilians –” Testor is steel beneath a sob. “There could still be civilians in those ships, we can’t just –”

“Black One,” Snap crackles in over the line, “we’ve got a dreadnought on your starboard side. Repeat, you _need to go now!_”

“How is that _possible?” _Paige says, through heaving breaths, “that’s not – this is _closed space_ – does that mean that they broke through and _murdered –”_

“How do they have a _ship!” _Karé shouts back, abandoning comm protocol entirely with the horror. “We _destroyed their base!”_

“Poe!” Iolo, his voice unsteady.

His heart jerks back into his chest, and he comes back to himself with his hands trembling on the controls and screams in his ears. Everything feels flushed, but he knows that if he were to reach out in front of him, it would be cold to the touch. _Get it together_, says the little General Organa in his head, _come on, these people here died for something, honour them by saving your own! RUN!_

Poe shouts: “Disperse! Kondro manoeuvre to my port side! Disperse and regroup outside the flare! Disperse! _Disperse!”_

Then he hits the throttle, and swallows his cowardice, and leaves the people, _their people_, the people of the ashes of the Republic, behind to the inky black.

—

Leia sits, and thinks.

She is a still stone in a raging ocean of panic as people rush around her on all sides, shouting a hundred different languages to a thousand different receivers, to a million different planets. She stays where she is, firmly at the head of the planning room, arms folded and brow furrowed, looking deeply into nothing, and _listening._

It’s all she can do, really, to stop herself from completely falling apart.

Outside of her body, in the swirling light she can feel across her skin and in the very marrow of her bones, all she can hear is crippling, wailing grief. The Force, as she knows it, is in agony.

_Unnatural, _a voice tells her, and it raises the hair on the back of her neck. She doesn’t recognise it, but she gingerly tilts her head at attention. It hits her again, harder this time, and her nails dig into a painful grip on her sleeve.

_ AGONYSCREAMINGWAILINGDEATHRUNRUNTHEYFOUNDUSBURNINGFIRERAGINGFLAMEFIRSTORDERCRYINGNOSAFETYFIREFIREFIREFROMTHESTARSBURNINGHOTBURNINGFIREHURTHURTHURTDEATHDESTRUCTIONNOTHINGLEFTLOSTGONEENTIRELYEMPTINESSHOLDONBURNINGAIRDEATHLOSTWHEREAREWELOSTTOUSREPUBLICGONEALONEALONEALONEBURNINGFIRESMOKESUFFOCATIONSCREAMINGSCREAMINGHELPHELPHELPSCREAMINGTHEYVEFOUNDUSRUNRUNRUNRUNWHERETORUNNOWHERESAFENOWHERETOHIDETHEGROUNDBENEATHUSISGONEWEARELOSTINSPACEWHEREAREWEHELPUSHELPUSPRINCESSPLEASESAVEUSPLEASEHELPPLEASETHEJEDIPLEASEOHFORCEIDONTWANTTODIEPLEASEPRINCESSLEIALEIALEIALUKELUKESKYWALKERISGONEPLEASEWENEEDHELPPLEASESOMEBODYHELPUSPLEASEBURNINGDEATHPLEASEWEDONTWANTTODIEDONTLETUSDIE – _

It is a fresh form of death.

It tastes of a burning Alderaan.

She waves off someone else trying to get her advice, her wisdom, on some matter to stave their panic. She only fractionally adjusts her posture but doesn’t break focus. She waits, almost patiently, for anything. For a sign.

Still, Luke says nothing.

_Please,_ she tries to say with words that aren’t words, aren’t sounds, only feelings of their shared agony. _Please, Luke, please we need you._

She gets a response from billions, but no clarity, and no peace. She risks unclenching long enough to rub her fingers across her forehead, and her ring catches in her hair. There is a smart whipcrack of pain that almost makes her stumble, but she doesn’t fall, because she can’t. She has never had the luxury of faltering, because she has never had the luxury of making decisions without consequences.

That is how it’s always been; Luke and Han in the stars, or beyond, and Leia on the ground, head in politics and heart heavy with duty and responsibility and drowning in grief. That’s what she did best: lose everything she loved, or cared about, or thought was worth protecting.

She is _so tired._

This cloying heaviness threatens to drag her under, as it has always done, and she fights it, as she has always done. She blinks back wetness, and gazes forward, trying to regain her footing. In front of her, a holo capture of the destruction of Starkiller plays in slow motion from several angles. She watches as the jagged trees are thrown back in a column of fire, as the land splits and the snow melts to vapour. She watches stormtroopers, thousands of them, scatter as ants as the planet buckles and breaks. She watches a tiny Millennium Falcon and a miniscule Black One take flight and escape the inferno through the rupturing atmosphere. She can’t see inside the facility; she can’t see where Finn fell, or where the final, crucial blast was shot, and she can’t see Han, or Chewie, and _she can’t see – _

Then, she feels Poe.

_FUCK_, is all Poe’s feeling, over and over again, _FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK GENERAL FUCK REY FINN FUCK FUCKING FIRST FUCKING ORDER FUCKING FUCK FUCK STARKILLER FUCKING GENODICIAL FUCKING FUCKS FUCK._

Beneath that, the righteous anger and _joy_ in flying and being alive that she cherishes as a part of him, there is misery. Rage, and terror, and disgust. Crippling, overwhelming despair of a battle already lost.

Leia pushes herself upright, sending a handful of her attendants scattering in alarm, all holding pads and trying desperately to stay calm, and she brushes them aside and strides out of the room. The Force, despite its distraction, guides her enough that she doesn’t collide with Statura as he sprints from one end of the base to the other, two comms pressed to his ears and speaking quickly with a static image of Pakor T-Nai. He skids, as though to stop, and she gestures him towards the tarmac but doesn’t break stride.

Poe is a pulsating ball of _noise_, which at least means that he’s easy to find, and she arrives as Black One neatly lands on the strip, untouched by combat but possessing a strange, jittery quality that is deeply unsettling. Poe, as much as he can be frenetic and a little absent minded on the ground, is focused almost to the point of distraction when in the air. The shield almost slams off as the rest of the squadron touches down beside him, and Leia watches as BB-8 is dropped and begins wailing in distress, circling around the ladder as Poe staggers to the ground, ripping his helmet free and taking deep, gasping breaths. He’s shaking, she realises, and watches as Kun joins him, almost tripping over herself as she grabs his shoulders and shakes him, whispering into his ear. She doesn’t really need to ask what they’ve seen, because she can taste it in the back of her throat, and feel the walls and engines blown open in space. Still, though.

“Poe,” Leia says, in a croak. “Poe, I trust that you and your squadron returned without injury.”

“General,” Poe manages, “General, the Hosnian – the _refugees –”_

She holds up another hand, and he stops, minutely twitching with the effort. There’s a strain on him, as though turning away from an impossible fight, to protect those already passed, was killing him too. It probably was.

“Poe,” she says again, “is anyone in your party injured?”

“No,” Poe says.

“The craft are undamaged? You understand the situation we’re in with overreaching resources.” That being, they don’t have any.

“No, General.”

“Good.” She clears her throat, and signals to Konnix. “Escort them to the meeting room and clear the landing bay,” she says, “we have another three ships from Guzablos landing in less than an hour.”

“It was a dreadnought, General,” says Kun, exhausted. “We couldn’t judge the size of their fleet, but they’d be taking potty shots at unarmed escape craft leaving the system. They must’ve been there since the initial attack, long enough that the debris is too thick to approach the epicentre.”

That explains her throbbing headache.

“I will take a report in the briefing room,” she says.

“But –”

“Encouraging panic in starving refugees does not lend itself to running a resistance operation,” Leia snaps. “The situation is dire, I understand, but please at least keep some decorum in front of those who do not have the luxury of having a home to return and have a breakdown in.”

They all swallow audibly, and she feels awful in that moment, but that’s never bothered her in her life, so she moves on.

“Captain Arana,” she says, “please escort Commander Dameron to the medbay, and then reconvene with us inside. I expect a full report and compilation of footage by then.” Poe opens his mouth in silent outrage. “Take a _moment_, Poe. You’ve been on your feet since Starkiller.” She levels him with a cool gaze, and he closes his mouth again, and lowers his gaze. “Take a breather, wash your face. This disaster will still be here after you sit down for longer than a second at a time.”

She lets the moment hold for a second, carefully looking at each of them in turn.

“Sign out with your techs, refresh yourselves, meet me inside. A dreadnought picking on ships full of children won’t venture this far out, and I won’t have my best people on the brink of collapse when we need all the help we can get. _Dismissed.”_

It takes a moment for them to obey, during which time the terrible pinched look in Poe’s face doesn’t fade, but he lets Arana place a firm hand on his arm and start tugging him back towards the main building, Wexley close behind. Statura nods and turns back towards the meeting room with the others. Leia, feeling the tumultuous sorrow still raging above her, now existing as bones instead of voices in the black, lets herself take a moment to gather everything in her power to stay steady, stay focused, and stay on task.

_For Luke, _she thinks, _I have to succeed, for Luke._

Then she turns on her heel, snaps out another order to clear the runway, and follows after her commander.

He sits, loose at attention, furiously rubbing at his forehead with the back of his hand. Arana hovers as the bot runs a scanner over Poe with a steady hand and a flat expression. Leia holds herself in the door, hands folded behind her back, and waits to be noticed.

Poe, even when exhausted, is not easily caught off guard, so it does not take long. He jerks more upright, and Arana forcibly pushes him back again. There’s still a mark on his face, she realises, that he’s clearly refused to use bacta to heal. A present, she knows, from his time on the _Finalizer. _

“General,” Poe says.

“Commander,” she says, careful to inject some warmth into her voice. “How are you feeling?”

“Wonderful, as always.”

“_Commander Dameron.”_

He squints a little, blinks a couple of times, then shakes himself. “As well as I can be, sir.”

Hmm. “That bad?”

Arana almost snorts but manages to contain himself. She turns to look at the bot.

“How is he?”

The droid clicks to itself, turning back to the datapad. “Standard exhaustion, General,” it says. “I would need a full mental health assessment for a possible prognosis. Potential physical and emotional burnout, some residual signs of post-trau –”

“Is this necessary?” Poe interrupts.

“Probably not,” Leia concedes, “since I know it won’t keep you out of the cockpit. This is more about making a point.”

“A point, General?” Arana sounds like he didn’t mean to speak.

She leans in, keeping her posture straight and careful. “You understand what happens when a band snaps,” she says, “and you understand the position we’re in. We’ve lost _everything_ we rebuilt from the Empire, and our allies are in the tens instead of thousands. But that doesn’t mean I can’t identify and remove a potential casualty before it happens.”

“Sir –”

“Put in a referral to Doctor Kontkovic,” she tells the droid, “for as soon as we have the numbers to accommodate Commander Dameron’s absence.” She turns back to her two men as the droid nods and rolls away. “I trust that if it comes to it, Poe, you’ll know if you’re not able to fly. And now, the briefing, if you please. We don’t have the luxury of hesitation anymore.”

Poe doesn’t fight her, a credit to him, but he does sigh heavily and furiously tousle his hair in a way that reminds her of – _reminds her of – _

It hurts, until she cuts that part of herself out.

Leia’s always been good at compartmentalising. It’s how she’s stayed alive so long.

—

Rey trembles with the effort of holding out her hand.

It must be her imagination, but the lightsaber seems to burn white hot in her grip and hold the weight of the universe in its shape. The wind is a buffer, and saltier than anything she’s ever known, but she digs her feet into the mud and keeps reaching, keeps looking forward, keeps hoping.

Luke Skywalker does nothing.

He is a small man in colourless robes, his grey hair and eyes the colour of the overcast sky above them. He stands on the outcrop, cloak billowing out behind him, and holds his arms at his sides. He doesn’t stir, doesn’t move towards her, to either accept the gift or reject it, he doesn’t walk from her, and he doesn’t look away. His old, tired eyes are _sad_, as much as the rest of his face is expressionless.

A moment passes in ocean spray and the audible rippling of wet grass between them. Bulbous, short winged birds scuttle noisily up and down the rocky turf somewhere in the distance, and one gives a shrieking cry. Luke doesn’t flinch, so neither does she.

She came so far, they all came so far, _Finn nearly died for this, so why isn’t he – _

“L-Luke Skywalker,” Rey says, and finds that her teeth are chattering. “You’re… Luke Skywalker?”

There’s only one answer, but he still doesn’t speak, only very slowly pulls his hood back up to cover his head, leaving his eyes in shadow.

“Please,” Rey says. She tries to put a smile in her voice, but it’s so hard. There’s some small, foreign part of this stranger that feels like _Han._ “Please, I – my name is Rey, I was sent by General Leia Organa, of the Resistance.”

She strains this new, terrifying thing inside of her to see anything, hear anything, that he might be saying or, maybe, _sending_ to her. She feels the sodden earth and the crashing of waves on slick rock, and Chewie humming about dinner somewhere far below, and R2 sliding up and down the beach, and an odd, rippling echo from all around, but a crippling silence from him. A wall of nothing at all. She opens her mouth, and then freezes as he seems to rouse himself, turn on his heel, and walk briskly back down the slope.

The anger comes quick and consuming.

“Hey!” Rey shouts at him, almost slipping and having to catch herself in the air. Her staff hits her in the back of the head. “_Hey! _Where do you think you’re going?!”

Luke Skywalker doesn’t pause, and begins to walk down the carved stairs, further away from her. She runs after him as best she can and find that she can’t quite catch up; his feet, hidden beneath his robe, seem to eat up the path between them. The way has been worn down by both weather and age, and at parts she must cling to the rough walls, or else risk slipping and falling. Still, her hold on the lightsaber is so tight her knuckles turn white.

“Hey!” Her voice is almost lost in the roar as they approach the water. “Hey! Stop – _stop running!”_

The earth seems to shudder and buckle beneath them, and as she hurries Luke seems to linger, and turn just enough that she can see the shadow of an eye, before resuming his pace, quicker this time, and moving away from her. She gapes, furious and incredulous, and risks her balance to bend, pick up one of the smooth, grey stones, and peg it at his head.

He smoothly stands aside, so it flies past him, and doesn’t pause. She tries again, trembling in the cold, and this time he simply ducks and walks faster. Rey wants to _scream._

In her mind, she can see Leia, face gaunt with grief and longing, hold her tight, press a coarse hand to her face, and whisper to her of her brother, the last Jedi, and hero to the galaxy. She sees Poe Dameron, with BB-8 anxiously burbling at his heels, who holds her in a brief but steadying grip, and promises to call the moment that Finn wakes, and she makes him a promise for herself in return. She consumes that pain and hope until her chest is taut and the fear almost swallows her, and she looks ahead to see the last hope of the Resistance, of _everything good_ walk away as though he has nothing to lose, and she tries again. One more.

“_Please!” _She cries and holds out the lightsaber. It’s slick with salt. “Please! They _killed Han_, they destroyed _everything_ and I know _he’_s not dead! _He was your student and I don’t know what to do!”_

She shudders, bent almost in half. It’s so cold, colder than any other planet she’s been to in this short time since she’s left Jakku, but there’s also a peculiar, tickling burning behind her ribs.

“Please,” she manages again, and it’s choked. “Please, we don’t know what to do. There are no more Jedi, we can’t – he tried to kill Finn, he tried to kill me, they want – they want –”

She has her hands on her knees, breathing past the panic, and sees two, scuffed feet step into her view. Rey jerks back, almost staggering, to see Luke, hood still up but posture relaxed, standing in front of her, closer than he has ever been. Close enough to see a bisected scar through one eyebrow, and a discolouration as the blow had clearly sliced through his eyelid.

“I’m sorry,” Luke says. His voice is a rumble, like a glider on sand, quiet and humming. Somehow, she has no trouble hearing it. “I am, truly. For your friends, and for the worlds you lost.”

He looks upward, and she automatically followed his gaze, and is shocked. The cloudy sky has cleared and darkened, enough that she can see the tapestry of a million twinkling dots above, burning in space but clear and bright. She didn’t even notice the time.

When she looks back, so has he, and is staring right into her eyes with a penetrating gaze. She is, sickeningly, suddenly reminded of Kylo Ren’s cool grip on her, as he’d clawed and torn his way in, stepping in a loping gait over everything is, before she’d turned him out. This, though, this touch is gentle, and distant, and foreign, and presses for just a moment before retreating.

“Yes,” Luke says, more to himself than her, “yes, you’ve lost so much in so short a time. So much he can do with so little thought.”

She holds the lightsaber out again, almost shaking it in his face.

“Please,” she says, “General Organa – Leia said that you must feel guilty, or shame for what happened. But we _need _you now, the galaxy _needs _the Jedi again, and –”

“No.”

Rey stops, starts to speak, then stops again. His voice has changed into something deeper, and more convicted. “_No?”_

“No.” He shrugs a little, and the lose folds of his robe swan around him, disguising his shape and casting the rest of him into shadow. “I’m sorry that you’ve come all this way, but the Jedi are no help to anyone anymore.”

She tries to say something, but he cuts her off.

“Really,” he continues, “I am truly, deeply sorry, but I can’t do anything for you. I can’t bring the New Republic back, and I can’t help your friend, and I can’t fight the Dark Side.”

He doesn’t sound sad, just resigned.

He doesn’t sound sorry at all.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, “to Leia, and to Han, and to you. But you’d best go back to where you came from.” He nudges the lightsaber back towards her without touching it, until it’s pressed into her breastbone. “You’re strong with the Force, I can feel it. I’m sure he could, too. And if that’s true, then you don’t need me to help you, anymore than you need a porg, or a bantha, or a utility droid.”

“I’m _not _a Jedi!” She can’t help but snap at him. “This – this _thing_ is only a day old! I don’t know how to –“ she furiously waves her hands in the air “ – and I can’t fight the First Order! We almost _died_ the last time, that’s why we need _your help!”_

“I’m not a Jedi. There are no Jedi, anymore.”

“_I’m looking at one!”_

“No, unfortunately all you’re looking at is a tired, old man who can’t help anyone.” He begins to turn away from her. In the distance, she can see a cluster of round, stone domes, and an open, flat paved pavilion space. It’s the only thing she’s seen so far that looks remotely lived in.

“So _what,” _Rey says. “So, you’re just going to hide on a rock while the galaxy burns and Kylo Ren tears the galaxy apart trying to find you? What about everyone else? How can you turn your back on everyone who believes in you?”

He only sighs again, louder this time.

“That’s their mistake,” he says in a dull voice. “And I can’t do much about that.”

“You can prove them right by coming back!” She blinks back wetness. “And I’m not going to let you run from this! I’m not, _we’re not _leaving until you take this back and come with us back to the Resistance.”

“You’ll be waiting a rather long time, I’m afraid,” he says simply, but still doesn’t walk away from her.

“Well you – you’re just gonna _stay here?_ _Alone?”_

He tuts a little, and almost, almost smiles. “Rey,” Luke says finally, and then moves back to the stairs, almost waiting for her to catch up, “if there’s one thing this life has taught me, it’s that I never get to be alone.”

She pauses for a moment, before stumbling after him. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a glimmer of movement, a figure in the fog. When she turns to look back, squinting in the gloom, she sees nothing but shapes, pale and indistinct, like dust in a storm.

They watch, with silent eyes, as she makes the long, lonely trek after him.

—

This is what he dreams: a world on fire.

He is flying, high enough that the planet is a curved circle of clouds and deep, green seas. He has no body, no eyes, no skin, but he can feel the breeze all the same, and the arms that cradle him in their warm embrace. Beneath, he watches as flames uncurl like the petals of a flower, frothing across the land until it is consumed in red heat, but still the burning does not hurt. He is safe, here, in the clouds where the grief cannot touch him, where fear is tasteless and far away, and he is free.

The scenery changes; in the belly of a sunless city, a thousand leagues deep, he sees hooded figures flip coins and swim upwards to the light. Cloaked men march in unison towards a tall temple with walls of bone that has been reduced to ash and smog but sits upon a locked vault. It takes nothing of what he is to open the door and step inside, using this form of his that has no legs and a mind of its own, and he looks at the knowledge of the universe held in tiny glowing cubes. He reaches out to touch one, and it withers in his hold, until he grasps only sand, grainy and rough. Somewhere from all around him, a voice screams:

_They’re coming! We can’t stop them! They keep coming and we can’t stop them!_

It hurts, this. The first thing he’s felt since he arrived… wherever this is. It leaves an odd taste in his mouth. Then, again, louder this time:

_Stop! Please, we won’t fight! Just don’t hurt – _

There’s a snapping noise, and he’s jerked backwards through time, planets blurring into hyperspace as he plummets away, faster and faster until he is swallowed by snow and blackened trees, tearing through the crust of a world and plunging into a white hot inferno that swallows him whole. He can’t fight it, because whatever holds him holds his everything. But it holds him tenderly, in a way he doesn’t recognise, and for that, somehow, he trusts it.

Then, comes the nightmare.

A skeletal necropolis appears before him, clattering apart and then rebuilding itself, a smoky stickiness clinging to buildings and streets. Lights flicker and die silently, and the place is empty. There is a steady, horrifying thudding from behind him, but he can’t turn to look. All he can do is wait, and watch, as a figure rolls into a formless shape, cast in darkness but gleaming hungry and gold, clawed fingers stretched outward, white flesh taut over rattling bones, with nails that scrape over nothing with a sound like a dying ship. The horror, unfocused as it is, blurs, and then _looks right at him_.

If he could scream, he would.

All he _can _do, is wait, and watch, as he is held, and the monster crawls towards him, sluggish and impatient and starving, drowning him in the horror and the turmoil and the rage and disgust, until he finally grows a will of his own and kicks and thrashes and bites down against something rubbery and foul, as it screams and wails and wraps around and around until he can’t tell where he begins and the thing ends.

_Please_, he finds himself begging to the force holding him in place_, please, it wants to kill me, please!_

It does not reply, but grips him tighter and tighter until he condenses into a burning star before – before –

He wakes in pain.

Well, sort of; he can’t feel his own face, or his legs, or anything else. His eyes are still shut, and he’s _so tired_, it would take all the effort in the world to open them. There’s a really annoying beeping noise coming from somewhere close by, and on his face he can feel the soft brush of air, gracing around the rim of his ear and down the side of his neck, leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake. He can smell bacta, but it’s not especially potent, and whatever he’s lying on is soft, softer than his bunk and softer than the medbay and softer than the _snow_.

The snow.

The snow, and Kylo Ren.

Rey.

_Rey._

He takes a deep, hacking breath as he arches up against the soft, sterile prison holding him down. He opens his mouth in a scream, but his throat is a void that swallows sound and crackles like the desert. He thrashes as hands come to hold him down, both flesh and metal, and there’s a muffled shouting around him.

_Please!_ He tries to say to an audience he can’t see, _please! He’s gonna kill her! The lightsaber – I lost the lightsaber – !_

He’s so cold. His teeth are chattering together so hard that they’ve torn at the thin skin of his lip, and he tastes salt, cloying and thick, over his tongue. It feels like drowning. It feels like dying. He doesn’t want – he doesn’t want to die.

“_-inn! Finn, can you hear me?!”_ There’s a cacophony of sharp noises, then hands, warm and gentle, press against either side of his face, holding him in orbit. Anchoring him from flying into space. He doesn’t know the hands, but he knows their heat, and their joy, and their worry. “He’s not responding, Doc, can we get –”

Light hits him, and his eyes, gelled and sticky, jolt open to a world of white. He’s gasping for air again, only now he can see, past his eyelashes, that there’s a mask strapped on the lower half of his face, fogging at his efforts to breathe. Above him is a ceiling, not the seamless metal of a Star Destroyer or the cold everything of Starkiller but a stone roof that is cracked and guttered, and shining with spots of green. The air is fresh, absent of a dull metallic taste that permeated everything in the First Order, and instead smells… clean, somehow. A summery, sweet scent that he doesn’t recognise, but makes his hands unclench and his shoulders lower, his back finally hitting the bed below.

Above him, almost blurred by closeness, are dark eyes and curling hair and a mouth that he sees is just saying one word, over and over again.

He shudders, and manages to reach up, and knock a loose fist against the side of Poe Dameron’s face.

Poe smiles, showing his teeth. “Hey, Finn. Nice of you to finally join us.”

Finn trembles from the lost tension as his body abruptly relaxes, feeling for the first time sharp pain up and down his back, and the odd static in the tips of his fingers and below his knees. He feels terrible, he realises, worse than a standard punishment, and much worse than any normal, rigorous kata inflicts. And while he can remember particulars; how the lightsaber hummed enough to rattle his teeth and almost pull his arm from his socket, Rey lying motionless in the snow, the ice steaming from beneath their feet, everything else is tilted and dark.

He fumbles the mask aside, struggling with the straps until Poe reaches down and carefully unbuckles it from his mouth.

“You okay?” Finn tries to ask, but it ends up coming out as a slurred: “’Oo kay?”

Poe must be fluent in strongly medicated mumbling, because he puts a comforting hand on Finn’s shoulder with a laugh.

“Yeah, buddy, I’m fine. Great, even.”

“Rey,” Finn says, getting out an: _“’Ay?” _instead.

“Rey’s fine,” Poe says, “you saved her, and everyone else. She’s not here right now, but we destroyed the base, and their fleet, and saved the Resistance.”

_Rey’s not here?_

“’Ere?” _Where?_

“She went to find Luke Skywalker,” Poe says, and turns to gesture at something outside of Finn’s field of view. “They’ve been gone about a week, so we’re just waiting on a report. Everything’s fine. _Everyone’s fine.”_

Finn has to take a moment to digest this, and everything else. Poe leans back, and for the first time he sees the human doctor, the one who treated Chewbacca and fussed over him briefly before the war meeting, as she points a light into his eyes, one after the other, and then notes something on a pad. Being awake is exhausting, he thinks, and risks closing his eyes for a moment to try and orient himself in this strange new world he’s woken up in. Because the First Order cultivated a strict narrative and a very literal worldview, Finn decides that trying to linearly list everything he knows might shed some light on whatever the _kriff_ is going on.

Here’s what he gets: he fought Kylo Ren in the snow, _with a lightsaber; _Rey(?) fought Kylo Ren in the snow, _with a lightsaber_; Starkiller is destroyed; they all survived, somehow.

He doesn’t list it, but Finn hopes very, very much that Kylo Ren died in the explosion, along with everyone else that has ever hurt him in the name of politics that were never properly explained. Force willing even Phasma couldn’t survive a core meltdown in a garbage chute.

It must have been a time later when he opens his eyes again, because when he turned to look at the chair beside the bed, General Leia Organa has commandeered it, and is flicking through channels on a holo put on mute.

Without looking up at him, she says: “I hope you don’t mind, but I dismissed Poe from his self-designated mission of standing vigil over you until he stressed himself into a coma.” Leia’s eyes briefly flick towards something he can’t see, before finally moving to meet his gaze. “And I didn’t get the opportunity to thank you before,” she says, “so. Thank you for everything you gave us. Undoubtedly the galaxy would be a great deal worse off, if you hadn’t been around.”

_I almost wasn’t_, Finn doesn’t say, because thanking about the sheer enormity of events that led him to this point is overwhelming, and a bit nauseating. What if he hadn’t been deployed on Jakku? What if Slip hadn’t died? What if he’d never met Poe? What if he’d never met Rey, or BB-8, or Han or Chewie or –

“’M sorry,” he manages. “Sorry, ‘bout Han.”

There’s an imperceptible shudder in her, but she doesn’t break away.

“Thank you,” she says, “but I think we all lost something that the First Order took from us.”

_Still._

“Ren, he’s your – your –”

“Enemy.” She huffs out a breath and crosses her legs. The holo switches off. “He’s my enemy, and yours, and any others who stand against tyranny. That’s all.”

“But –”

“Anything else he is is my burden to bear, not yours,” Leia insists in her raspy voice. “Leave it at that.”

There’s a comfortable silence that passes between the two of them. Leia is intense, enough so that he can almost feel her from across the room, but she doesn’t unsettle him the way his superiors traditionally have. There’s a sense of grounding _authenticity _about her, something that he’s never experienced from a military commander before.

“And how are you?” She asks finally, “you’ll tell us if you’re in any pain.”

It very obviously isn’t a request, and it clearly comes from someone who used to being obeyed.

“Yeah,” Finn says, and tries to clear his throat. It’s hurting less to speak, and the drip of whatever they gave him seems to have cleansed most of the aches in his body. “Yeah, I – I’m good.”

“You must have questions.” Another statement.

Finn feels so hollowed out that questions are all his has. Questions and this fear of the great unknown; what exactly he is now, after all of this. Finn sits on his thoughts for a second, and rifles for something to say.

“So Ren didn’t die.” S’not really a question, but he’s gonna start out slow.

“No,” Leia swallows, “no, we know that for sure. Purportedly he’s missing part of his face and fell down a ravine, but he’s still active. We haven’t heard anything of him since Starkiller, though. I’d imagine he’s nursing his wounds and thinking on his actions.”

“Can you…?”

“I’m not Luke. My relationship with the Force is infinitely more nebulous, and much harder to describe. But I always know, perhaps, more than I should. I knew when Han died, and I knew who killed him. So, in turn, I know that his killer is roaming somewhere in the wild space.”

They linger in the quiet for a moment.

“Rey… has the Force.” Also not a question. “Like you. Like _him._”

“Yes.” She looks at him curiously. “And I have to ask, what do you think of all this? I can’t imagine Snoke is especially forthcoming about Jedi centred education.”

Snoke definitely was _not_, in the same way he wasn’t forthcoming about anything deemed too radical to be consumed by his military. The Jedi were discussed exclusively in the past tense, and exclusively in a particularly unfavourable light. It was weird, in retrospect, that the First Order chose to talk about it at all, but perhaps it was to limit the exposure troopers had to outsider information that they had no context for. It was much easier to believe that a Jedi was evil, that the Force was only to be used for personal gain and death and heartbreak, when you knew what all those things were in relation to each other.

“I know what the Force is,” Finn admits. “But mainly… just from the Dark side, I guess. It’s a power that some people can use, for good or for evil. It can corrupt, and consume.” He considers when Leia looks distinctly impressed. “But – it wasn’t really talked about with troopers in a practical way. Mainly it was just used to describe how powerful Ren and the Knights are.”

Specifically, how Ren and the Knights could use the Force to isolate traitors and those who chose to betray Snoke and the cause, and wring them of information and thought like a sponge. It was an excellent and effective deterrent.

“Hmm,” Leia hums, and then turns the holo back on. He notices now, closer up, that rather than moving footage, she’s instead clicking through slides of faces and data, all young, all slightly distorted, one after the other. Then, she smiles, looking very amused. “Stop _lurking_, Poe, you’re going to give yourself a stress ulcer.”

Finn turns his head as fast as he’s able, which isn’t very, but catches the end of the door opening, and Poe leaning in against the doorframe, jumpsuit pulled off to his waist, sleeves tied around his hips, with a ratty white undershirt underneath. There’s a glean of tags on a chain round his neck, and his hair is tousled, like he’d run his fingers through it over and over again. He looks exhausted.

“General,” Poe says formally, with a nod of his head. He grins when he sees Finn. “And you’re awake again. You’ve gotta stop scaring us, buddy.”

“You first,” Finn says, and smiles back. It pulls at a cut on his cheek, but it’s worth it to see Poe beam at him. “Stop crashing things.”

Poe huffs. “One time is not a pattern.”

_“Commander Dameron,” _Leia says in a stern voice, but it’s… fond. Almost gentle, like an adult chiding a very young child. It’s very at odds with how she talks about anything regarding Ren. “Sit down before you collapse.”

Poe does, but in a very affected way, and casually arranges himself until he’s got an arm hooked over the back of the chair, and both legs out straight in front of him. He sags a little, and scrubs at his face.

“I am _so _glad to see you awake,” Poe says, “by the Force, it’s about time something finally went right.”

Everything in Finn went still. “What –?”

Poe shakes his head. “It’s fine,” he says, and reaches out to grip Finn’s wrist, “sorry, just dealing with the fallout of everything is _stressful_, and I’m _stressed.”_

“That’s why I put you on leave, Poe,” Leia says, with a roll of her eyes, “but since you’ve decided to be a nuisance, you can sit here and help us with something.”

“Helping?” Finn asks, confused, “with what?”

“With _this._” And with that, she turns the holo towards them, and Finn is looking at a data pack of a young woman, younger than Rey, shown with a serious expression and pitch eyes. There was a symbol on the sleeve of her shirt, that was indistinguishable from the angle. She looks… familiar, and there’s a weird, sickening feeling in his stomach. “Do you recognise this person?”

Poe is leaning forward too. _“Is that who I think it is?”_

Leia doesn’t reply to him, only moves closer to Finn. “I’m truly sorry to start asking more questions so soon,” she says, “but unfortunately, we currently don’t have the luxury of time or security. The Hosnian system was destroyed, as was most of the First Order fleet, but we also know that there is a new, separate number of ships operating in the Core that seem to be killing the remaining survivors and making outspoken dissenters disappear. This new fleet was not docked, nor had any interaction with Starkiller. Please, Finn, do you know this person?”

And Finn did know, he realises, because he’s seen her before. Just once, before Jakku, before he’d completed his preliminary training, and before he’d fired a real blaster. Back before he wore armour, when he stood as a single being in a unit, arms behind him and face forward, as this girl, this woman, marched in front of them, head high, eyes glowing yellow. A toxic, sickening darkness cascading off her like a sudden night fall, or the all-consuming black of the far Outer Rim. A foreign uniform, a mask in her hands. A lightsaber at her waist.

She’d been the only one to show her face.

“Yes,” Finn hears himself say. The horror doesn’t hit him immediately, and he tries to choke it down. “Yeah, I know her.”

Leia settles back in the chair, and switches the holo off. She looks aged, suddenly.

“_She’s_ the one?” Poe asks, incredulous. “I thought – I thought she was _dead. _Or missing. Or better yet, dead _and _missing._”_

“No,” Leia says, her voice very quiet. “No, of course not. Ren is in hiding, and the First Order has retreated, for now. Snoke has very few options. It only makes that he’d summon every ally he has left.” She considers, for a moment. “But she, _they,_ were on assignment, looking for something somewhere off the maps, for years. I wonder… if they succeeded.”

Everything hurts. Something’s jabbing him in the side of the head, like something he can’t quite remember right. Somehow, he twists with Poe’s grip on his wrist until he’s clinging to Poe’s hand, hard enough that his knuckles hurt. Poe doesn’t flinch, only presses his other hand over Finn’s holding him tight and warm.

“What,” Finn manages, “she – she’s not a trooper, she’s –”

“Of course it makes sense,” Leia says, “that the only ones left with any sort of power left in this vacuum they forced us into are her, and whoever else is following her these days.” She blinks, and gives a bitter smile. “They _would_ be the only weapons left in his employ. There’s a lot someone could do, a lot of people you could kill if you were desperate enough, with the Knights of Ren.”

—

They die like rats.

It’s the only unfortunate thing about a dreadnought; the distance. Being at the helm is a very specific kind of power, but firing a short from a one-person fighter, and seeing the results just outside a windshield is a specific kind of intoxicating. Still, it’s all about compromise.

Sala doesn’t compromise.

She stands, perfectly still, feet apart and hands clasped, still at attention. The deck is utterly silent; even the audible tapping at pads and the comms are lowered, and her officers’ glance furtive, terrified looks at her and each other, as though waiting for someone to snap. The room _stinks_, and there’s a cloud of mortification coming from somewhere in front of her, which she could investigate, if she cared.

She doesn’t.

She cares that a squad of Republic ships apparently escaped into hyperspace, and she cares that, based exclusively on how pathetic their specs were, they had to belong to Organa’s howling, desperate brood of peasants and pirates in the Outer Rim, and she cares that they dared enter the Core in the first place. The garbage should stay where it belongs; with all the other trash, somewhere where she doesn’t have to worry about it stepping outside its station, and above its absurd aspirations. Honestly, it would just make everything easier if someone on her putrid little base grew a brain and decided to end Organa’s misery with the right end of a blaster.

But Sala doesn’t put much measure in people doing the smart thing, so she’s fully accepted that sooner or later, she’s going to have to pull that particular trigger herself. She tries not to get drunk off the idea, because while she doesn’t compromise, she is _especially _good at being realistic, and setting realistic expectations for others. Because everyone in the galaxy is either exceptionally stupid, exceptionally incompetent, or exceptionally dead, she is very rarely wrong and, even more rarely, ever loses a fight she starts.

That, is what she relishes in. That is when she _succeeds. _

It’s working up to an annoyance; this voyage through dead space, taking cheap shots at dying crafts and Resistance vermin who happen to cross their path. The urge to fight, to claw someone apart, makes her blood sing and run thick and hot. It takes a lot of Sala’s willpower to stay on task, and stay focused, and she knows that this is why she was chosen in the first place; she is capable of being objective, and her subordinates tend to fail when faced with something they can’t tear to pieces with a lightsaber.

Sala, on the other hand, was born to be a leader, born to achieve great things for the Order, for herself, and for her House, and she makes sure that everyone knows it. Everything she does, is to ensure people know what she’s capable of.

In front of her, a helmsman is stammering out excuses on why he failed to do his one, very easy task during the one time Republic craft showed up, and the one time that they successfully escaped from one of the finest ships in their fleet.

“Explain to me again,” Sala says. Her helmet is resting on the panel in front of her, and she was careful to have the front facing outwards towards her audience, eye slits blank and terrifying. She keeps her own face carefully impassive, and the words come out in a low, unimpressed drawl while she stares him down. “Perhaps I don’t understand the specifics of running a ship this size. You see, I was under the impression that you were in charge of the binary scanners, meaning you were capable of catching any fleet moving in and out of hyperspace before they successfully escaped and decided to tell the _whole galaxy_ that we were in the Hosnian system. Was I wrong?”

“No, no sir,” says the helmsman. He’s sweating, profusely, and it’s disgusting, “no, but you see –”

“I _see_ a lot of things, Lieutenant Morvo,” Sala interrupts, because this conversation is pointless and they both know it. Morvo seems distinctly unsettled that she knows his name, which is why she bothered to do so in the first place. “Such as, I saw that you blundered your post, and I saw that you let our _enemies_ escape, and I saw that you _failed_ to recaptured their signal, and that you _failed_ to notify me or anyone else of your mistake until it was already too late for preliminary, disciplinary action.” She lets a half smile show. “Answer me two questions, lieutenant.”

Morvo trembles. “Yes, sir.”

“Do you think someone loyal to the First Order would have let our enemies escape?”

He squeezes his eyes shut, and shakes his head, just once.

“Do you know why I don’t wear a mask?”

His eyes open, almost confused as she leans towards him.

“Others think that masks intimidate, but I disagree. I want you to look at my face, as the last thing you see, when I kill you.”

_Snap._

He dies quickly and ungracefully, and his body drops back to the deck to a stricken silence.

It would have been marginally more interesting if he was someone actually worth bothering with; a spy, or a saboteur, or perhaps a lost senator in hiding, someone she could hold up to a dying Senate with the proclamation of their absolute defeat. Morvo was too pathetic to really be worth killing, she thinks, as the body cools at her feet. Just boring enough to be incompetent, and not quite stupid enough to at least try to pretend he wasn’t so. Truly, just completely below average, in a way that was infuriating.

She casts a slow, steady look over the rest of the room, and no one meets her eyes.

“Dispose of this,” she says dismissively, and resists the urge to kick at the corpse with her boot. Its unseeing eyes gaze up at the ceiling, clouded and still. “And set course for the _Supremacy_.”

The turn on her heels as she departs is unnecessary, but the tension in the room sharply spikes as she does so, and she smirks out into the empty corridor, tucking her helmet under one arm. As she silently makes her way to the communication chambers, a presence with the subtlety of a Rancor swarms, until she hears footsteps meeting her own. A smug voice tuts, almost in her ear.

“Our master will be displeased at your turnover of staff,” Kalen Ren says, and she knows that beneath his mask he’s grinning with rows and rows of shiny teeth. “Good help is just so hard to find these days.”

It’s rare to find a non-human trooper, rarer still to find one of Kalen’s status, and almost unheard of to find a Force user left alive long enough for Snoke to find a use for them. Pantora is still unequivocally loyal to the New Republic, but Kalen has renounced politics and enjoys loudly declaring his intentions to initiate his home world into the First Order fold the moment he has the opportunity. Based on past successes, he is more likely to wed and bed a Wookie.

“Our master will be more displeased that his staff let a squad of Resistance fighters escape the system,” Sala replies in an emotionless tone, careful not to let her impatience show. Kalen feeds on insecurity and doubt as a viperbat drinks plasma, and is twice as unsubtle. “Our mission relies on cohesion and cunning, two things of which you are not familiar.”

Kalen chuckles a metallic laugh, but she can feel his indignity, and his anger. And his profound _jealousy_ as she pilots her own ship, and her own crew, on her own mission. He can die mad about it. When he speaks again his voice is silky and careful.

“I just wouldn’t want anything to depose you from your position, that’s all, dear leader of mine,” he says, all venom, “it’s such a precarious position we’re in, after all. So much could go wrong, out here alone in space.”

“That would be threatening if you were even half as intelligent as you seem to think that you are.”

He snarls, but she doesn’t let him finish.

“Don’t forget that I tolerate your existence because you’re _useful_,” she says, leaving no room for argument, “and that the moment your aspirations outweigh your usefulness, you’ll find that you won’t have to worry about our master’s displeasure anymore.”

The two sentries at the door bow to her and the door slides open, Kalen now striding behind her, firmly, briefly, put back in his place. Not that it’ll last long; he lusts for power like a hound in heat, and it drives him to madness and stupidity.

“No,” she says, “you’ll have to worry about _me.”_

The room itself is plain, as are all rooms aside from Snoke’s palace, but the holo is bubbling as it receives and begins generating the enormous transmission, which gives her time to drop to one knee and pull her mask over her face. After a moment, Kalen follows suit.

Beside them, after a moment, she sees four other figures emerge in shades of blue and static, all in the same position, and all masked. Her brothers. Even Kalen, whose Force presence begins to pulse and jitter in apprehension, cannot dull this moment as Supreme Leader Snoke appears in front of them, the size of a giant and looking down at them with the posture of a king.

“My lord,” she says, and the others repeat her words a moment later, “what orders?”

Snoke doesn’t speak immediately, he just greedily stares down at them as he lounges in his enlarged throne, fingers drumming back and forth, a malformed grin on his face.

_“My knights,”_ he says in a hoarse purr, _“finally returned to their rightful place in the galaxy.”_

Kalen mutters something insulting under his breath, and Sala reaches back to hold his mouth shut, hard enough that he has to silently sob past her grip before she lets him go, giving him one last shake for good measure.

_“Return to me,”_ Snoke is saying, “_you will return to the fleet.”_

From her right, Martel speaks up through the voice filter.

“My lord,” he says, “we haven’t completed your assignment on D’Qar, yet –”

Snoke shuts him up with a wave of his hand.

“_Enough fighting with rats over scraps,” _he says, “_you’ll return to the Citadel, immediately.”_

“Why, my lord?” Telon, utterly submissive and awed by Snoke’s attention, “why take us from fulfilling your vision? We are _so close. _We can drive the rabble from this system permanently and make Organa kneel to us._”_

Snoke scoffs, but smiles wider, so Sala can see a handful of nubbly, rotting teeth through his distorted flesh.

_“You will do as I say,” _he says. It echoes in Sala’s head. “_You will do as I say, and greet your leader’s return to the world of the living, as I command you to.” _He looks right at her, and she feels her eyes right through her head, gnawing at her thoughts, and her loyalty. _“Give Kylo Ren the welcome he deserves.”_

—

Rey squats in the mud and tries not to panic.

She’s spent a lot of time squatting in the sand and not panicking, but the difference now is that it’s very wet, and cold, and there’s an isolationist, unreasonable Jedi Master on the other side of the door, refusing to budge. Really, this is probably a pretty amazing time to panic, but she squashes the urge just the same. Night fell slowly without her noticing, and the darkness is thick and absolute. If she stands, she can see where the Falcon is parked, closer to the beach, the small camp casting a pallid glow on the stones. Here, though, the only light is that which peeks through the slits in the hovel, and what remains from the cycle of the twin suns far beyond the horizon.

She shivers, and wraps her cloak further around herself, burrowing in as much as she is able.

There is a raw, cracking loneliness in her, something she only noticed after Finn’s warmth and grip on her hand was gone and lost to her, far, far away on a gurney waiting to wake. Even BB-8 would have been welcome here, she thinks, as much as it would have struggled with stairs and probably not appreciated the view. But it’s better this way. It _is. _Finn’s as safe as he can be, and BB-8 is back with Poe Dameron, where it belongs, and she’s – she’s –

Alone. Again, like she always is.

This thing in her rises, briefly, before she squashes it again, and tries to focus by rethinking her plan. Or lack thereof.

The basic one had failed; tell Luke that the galaxy was on the brink of ruin, and trust that he would do the right thing and come with her, saving everyone and stopping the war before it even started. Trust that he’d chosen a much harder and ill-defined route that left her insecure and unsteady. Maybe if she actually understood what she could do with the Force, she might be able to convince him that way, but it seemed that a Jedi Master would be a little more complicated to control than a trooper, so she crosses that off the list too. She puts her head in her hands, and just _breathes_.

Chewie, at her request, stays at the Falcon, and had made a guttural roaring sound when she’d first requested it.

“I know,” Rey had said, “listen, Chewie, I _know_ he’s your friend. But he’s also old, and I think he’s spent a lot of time alone, and too many happy memories might make him bolt, so we’re just gonna take it slow, okay?”

Chewie had agreed, but just barely, and sulked a little past his bites of roasted Porg.

So now she sat, and waited, and thought, and thumbed the communicator in her hand, that was dead and quiet. She’d tried sending a message to Leia, short and to the point: _Found Luke. Trying to Convince. Talk Soon_, but it’d bounced back, and finally it had died entirely. The weird pull of the planet affected the ship too, to the point that the diagnostics started going haywire whenever the engine powered on. Chewie had made plans to work on the Falcon as he waited for her and Luke, diagnosing it as a comm issue from being so far out from the Core, but she isn’t so sure.

She sighs again, and huddles even smaller, pressing against the side of the hut as the wind picks up with a howl, looking up past her hood, and then stumbling backwards onto her hands in surprise.

There is a man standing in the twilight.

Despite the sea spray, his robes are dry and clean, and where he stands in the dim light, she sees he casts no shadow. He smiles, and its warm.

“Sorry, young one,” he says, and it rings in her head like a ripple in a pond, “did I startle you?”

_What?_

“What?” She says. She can feel Luke still behind her, still motionless after hours of waiting, and she had, despite his words, assumed that he was completely alone on the island.

The man laughs, swelling around him into a circle of noise. When it touches her, it is soft, and safe. She adjusts her stance as he steps into the light, and she gets a good, proper look at him. He’s older than her but still younger than Luke, and clean shaven with hair cropped close to his head, and wearing a light tunic and dark undershirt. As she looks at him, he seems to flicker, quick enough that for a moment she sees him as even younger, with longer hair and darker clothes. There is a long-healed scar through his eyebrow that stays and pulls a little as he looks at her.

She doesn’t risk igniting the lightsaber, and instead points her staff at him. He tucks his hands in his sleeves and holds a very unassuming pose.

“Don’t worry,” he says, “I’m not here to fight with you, Rey.”

“How d’you know my name?” She says, and adjusts her grip. “What is this? Some kind of – of weird… Jedi thing?”

“I sure hope not,” he says, amused, but doesn’t walk closer to her, “no, no, this is just where I spend most of my time, these days.”

“What are you?”

He shrugs a little, and it’s a very shapeless movement. “I exist,” he says in an echo, “in this life and the next. That’s all I am; a memory.”

“Whose? Whose memory?”

He says nothing, but peers over her shoulder to the hut, and she turns, then looks back at him quickly.

“Luke’s? You’re Luke’s… friend?”

He laughs again, but now it sounds melancholy, and full of regret. “No,” he says, “no, I’m not Luke’s friend.”

“Why… how are you _here, _then?”

“The Force can do amazing, impossible things,” the man says, “some I’m sure you’re aware of, already. Visions of the future and the distant past, moving things without touching them, pushing against people’s thoughts in their heads.” He looks at her, curiously. “Even those we think are lost, might sometimes return.”

That’s so beyond weird, even after everything else that’s happened, that Rey has to shut her eyes and rub at her face with her hand for a second.

“You’re a ghost?”

“Hmm, unpoetic but not inaccurate.”

“What is a _ghost_ doing way out here?” She asks, “don’t they haunt places where people _live?”_

“I’m very flexible,” says the ghost, and finally moves closer. Somehow, though, he still doesn’t feel dangerous. “And unrestrained by mortal laws.” He holds out a hand. “Come,” he says gently, “walk with me for a bit?”

Against her better judgement, but with the pull of the Force, she refuses his hand but walks after him, shouldering her staff and putting a hand on the saber in her satchel. Maybe it _was _all a weird initiation test, if not by Luke then maybe by whatever being Jedi traditionally followed, Force related or otherwise. She carefully picks her way over the cobblestones but finds the way easier and less precarious with the ghost beside her. The night isn’t quite as intense, and the path seems less unclear. After a moment of nothing but the distant, roaring water, he says:

“You seem to be taking this pretty well.”

“This isn’t the weirdest thing that’s happened to me this week,” she replies, and then thinks for a second before saying: “Who are you? Were you, I mean, before?”

He takes a moment to ponder this, before guiding her around a carved icon on a plinth, weathered and indistinguishable with age.

“Anakin was my name,” he says finally. The name calls like a bell, but she can’t remember why. The Force seems to _sing _with it. “But I’ve been called many things.”

“Like what?”

“Most of them are insulting,” Anakin admits, “or inaccurate. Or both. So let’s give just Anakin a try, shall we?”

“Alright, Just Anakin,” she says, and he barks out another laugh, “how – why are you on an island in the middle of dead space, looking after a Master who’s abandoned the galaxy? Aren’t there other things to do in the Jedi afterlife?”

“You think I’m a Jedi?” He sounds surprised, and he wavers again, until he looks only a little older than her.

“You look like one.”

“Are you the Jedi expert now?”

“Maybe,” she says, “if the last one in the galaxy didn’t want to sit in a cave for the rest of his life and eat _grubs_.”

“He doesn’t eat grubs,” Anakin tells her, “but he is a fan of raw fish, so if you’re after opportunities for nepotism, that’s a clear shot.”

She grimaces at him, and he frowns.

“He’s been here a long time,” Anakin says, tiredly, and he’s back to looking older again. “I thought that maybe, someone new might… push him, in the right direction.”

“Like where?” Rey cries out, finally. They’re on a cropping of rock over the sea that swells, inky and indistinct. There is a strange sucking noise coming from somewhere deep down, and it tugs at her. “He won’t _listen_ to me, and apparently he won’t listen to some weird Force ghost that follows him around, so what am I supposed to do?! He’s a _hero,_ and it’s like he doesn’t care! About Leia, and the Resistance and – and –”

It comes out as a sob. Anakin’s response is almost lost in the tide.

“He does care,” he says, very quietly, “he cares more than anyone I’ve ever known, except maybe –” He stops himself, and seems to shiver. “You have to believe me when I say he _wants _to help, it’s just not something he believes he can do for you. He doesn’t believe that the Jedi can offer anything to the galaxy anymore.”

There’s a burning at her leg, where her satchel rubs against her hip and she reaches inside to find the saber hot, as though still in use. Anakin goes quiet beside her, and when she turns she sees that he’s transfixed, eyes dead-set on it, barely blinking.

_“That’s _why I – that weapon,” he says, in an echo, “where – I believed it lost.”

She looks down at it, then back at him, and holds it out. “You know it?” She asks, “I thought it was Luke’s.”

His fingers brush it, close enough to touch but she can see he casts no reflection, and he pulls away, almost regretfully.

“I know it,” he says to her. “I know it very well. Rare it is, to find a saber with more than one master. Traditionally, the crystal and the hilt were found and forged by one person only. Each Jedi was meant to build their own for themselves.”

“So it wasn’t Luke’s before?” Rey asks, frowning. “It was _yours.”_ Her eyes widen, and she takes a step back. “But that, but that means _you’re –”_

As she stares at him, that odd, grabbing sensation seems to increase in both strength and fervour, and she almost stumbles. Looking down, she sees more than feels Anakin’s grip on her arm.

“Rey,” Anakin is saying, sounding troubled, “you should go back to the village.”

She moves forward, and salt hits her as a great swell clashes against the rocks.

“_Rey!” _Anakin says, louder this time, but she can’t look back.

Another voice joins his, older and accented.

“_Rey!” _Out of the corner of her eye she sees another man, this one older with a white beard and hair, but wearing the same robes, with the same look of trepidation as Anakin. “_Rey, it’s not safe!”_

_What isn’t_, she tries to ask, and watches as more of the strange, blue ghosts seem to manifest behind Anakin, like trees in a forest, many of them silent but many more screaming her name, imploring her return to their arms. She tries, truly, but the ground seems to fly beneath her until she stops and the wind slows to nothing. She’s sheltered in an alcove of menhirs, reaching tall like the fingers of a hand. Even in the light, the rock is pitch black and shines, and in the centre of the round space, is a pit.

It isn’t smooth; instead its shape mimics beings clawing for freedom; pulpy shapes mar its edge, a discoloured and irregular pattern. From within, she sees a burning red, flickering and insidious, and leans in as it calls to her, louder this time.

All around her, she hears a child crying.

_“Rey!” _Anakin again, only this time his breathing is heavy and audible, and as she stands there, on the precipice, his voice seems to change in pitch and tone. “_Rey, it calls to you.”_

It does call, loud enough to make her head spin and bile to rise-up in the back of her throat.

As she staggers forward, it hits her; a cacophony of visions, similar to beneath Maz’s palace, but this time blackened with soot and a reaching gasp. A building, burning and screaming in betrayal; blades of cauterizing red; someone falling fast and deadly; and finally, the wailing picks up, until it manifests into a child turned away from her, dressed in white with dark hair, curled into a ball. He evaporates into smoke as she reaches out, tears streaming down her face, but his pain continues and tears her apart. She feels his everything, and it feels like death.

Death, misery, despair, anguish, fury, desperation, and _anger._

Then it grabs her, pulls her down, and she drowns.

—

The unexpected thing about the Knights of Ren is that, at some point, they were children.

The First Order has rigorous and disciplined expectations for its troopers, most of which Finn now know are false; tactical mind, capable leader, completely loyal, physically fit, prioritises the _mission_ above all else. In reality they prey on worlds and people incapable of fighting back against their children’s abductions or, less commonly, those who tried to speak out against them. They weeded out the weak in the early days of intense training, and pushed those they deemed worthy of success, but really they only had one pre-requisite for a soldier: being human.

Finn had only seen one Knight before Kylo Ren, and she had also chosen to be unmasked in front of his squad, prowling up and down the lines until he felt as though he was looking down the jowls of an enormous, starving animal. That was the face General Organa had shown him on the holo, although she looked at least a decade younger, and a great deal less terrifying.

“Her name is, _was_, Scylla Kryze,” Leia says, from where she stands at the head of the table. To her right sits Statura and Konnix, with a Twi’lek captain Finn hasn’t been introduced to at her left. Beside Finn, Poe leans in to get a better look, and puts a steadying hand on Finn’s shoulder. “A child of Mandalore, chosen by Luke Skywalker for the New Jedi Order.”

“A Mandalorian?” asks Taslin Brance, almost bemused, “I’m amazed they consented to _that_ exchange, especially from House Kryze.”

“You underestimate Mandalore’s dedication in never ignoring an opportunity for political and military gain over their opponents,” Statura interjects, “it’s very possible that they intended to use her as a means to their own ends.”

“What they planned to do with her is irrelevant,” Leia says, “because she betrayed the Order with Kylo Ren and murdered the other initiates, before fleeing justice.” She flicks to a different image, this one slightly corrupted, as though removed from a broken file. There were six masked figures, all in black. “We believed, and we now know, that she is currently operating as Sala, captain of the Knights of Ren.”

There is a loud hiss around the table, as a number of the commanders react in revulsion. Finn trembles a little, a bead of sweat beneath his shirt travelling the dip of his spine, and making the scar sing a ghostly ache. Poe’s grip is grounding.

“Not only that,” Leia continues, and flicks again. Two more files appear in front of them; a tall human with a crooked nose and small eyes, and a blue skinned boy with two stripes of his cheeks, and pale hair, “but we are also assuming that at least two more former initiates survived the massacre as Sala’s compatriots.” She gestures to the human. “Mujo Yarrisin, from Naboo, and Kinkuchi Dorai, from Pantora,” it changes again, back to the masked group, “are possibly the members Martel and Kalen.”

“Could they all be former Jedi?” asks Konnix, looking up from her pad. “Are we – are we _sure_ they’re all students of Master Skywalker?”

“We never received confirmation on the exact number of dead,” Leia replies, “and I don’t believe it’s unfair to assume that Kylo Ren turned a number of his older classmates when he left the Light. Certainly, it would be unwise to act without considering that a number of powerful, trained Force users may have just returned to Republic space from the Unknown Regions.”

The silence is deafening, and Finn can almost taste the rising level of panic. Then begins some intense muttering coming from all around them, before Poe speaks up.

“How does this affect us now?” Poe asks, his voice rising above the rabble. “They’ve already made an all-out assault against the New Republic, and we’ve already destroyed their primary base. Our forces are divided, but so are theirs. We don’t know if this puts us at more even footing or throws our odds further out of balance. Ren’s allies could further destabilise everything we’ve been working towards, especially when our priority should be helping refugees and displaced survivors from the Hosnian system.”

“We act decisively, and with surety,” Leia says. With a wave of her hand, the table falls quiet. Her words hold impenetrable weight. “For now, we have an advantage. One of our allies has located and presumably found Luke Skywalker.” More anxious tittering that dies down again. Finn’s heart clenches at the thought of Rey, and her journey into the unknown. “Now is the time to unite the Senate and push an assault on Snoke, and further cripple his fleet.”

“Do they still debate?” A voice cries out, incredulous. “_Now?_ Coruscant must be brought to heel, the galaxy can’t afford –”

“Coruscant has sat stagnant for a thousand years, and will sit stagnant for a thousand more,” Leia says sharply, “expecting it to do otherwise would be foolish. If the Senate will not act, we must act on the Senate’s behalf, and unify them ourselves. We cannot risk more loss by challenging Snoke directly on our own.”

Then, she looks directly at Finn, and all the attention in the room turns to him. There’s a twitchiness inside of him, this deep-seated urge to _run, _quick and far so that this creeping horror inside of him won’t consume him, sink in its claws until he sinks and vanishes altogether. Finn straightens up as much as he can.

“Finn was a stormtrooper for the First Order,” Leia says, “and acted as our primary contact for the destruction of Starkiller base.” Several beings around him give a respectful nod, including the Twi’lek. “He has also provided detailed intel on prior movements of the Knights, as well as the rough structure of their surviving fleet. Additionally, we now have confirmation of locations for the _Supremacy, _Snoke’s capital flagship_.”_

“We’re honestly trusting a stormtrooper’s intelligence?” A human at the table across from them slams a fist on the table, and makes the holo flutter before stabilising. “How desperate _are _we?”

“You’d be a lot _more_ desperate if I hadn’t told you everything I knew!” Anger flares up, sudden and fierce. How long had this person been sitting on this thought, that somehow Finn was corrupt and beyond redemption because he was indoctrinated into an army before he could remember a life from before. _How dare he be judged for that? _“I did what was right, for the galaxy, and for my friends,” Finn points and snaps his fingers, “what right do you have to question my loyalty? I forced into ignorance against my will, _what’s your excuse?”_

“No excuse at all,” Leia says as the human splutters. “Captain Balis, sit down before you hurt yourself.”

The human sits, bright red and sweating.

“Fucking nerfheaded _prick_,” Poe mutters, just loud enough for Finn to hear. There’s a warm, pleasant flush in his belly.

“I didn’t summon this council to question our allies,” Leia continues, “we have too few, and they are too precious to lose. So, we focus our attentions where we can, and bring others to our cause.” She nods, and a short, dark eyed woman in a jumpsuit steps forward, and pulls another holo from her pocket. “Rose is one of our intelligence officers from the Core. She’ll be briefing you on our position in the Senate.”

Finn cranes his head around Poe to look at her. She’s young, maybe his age, and her hair is cropped short in the front and pulled back from her face. She reminds him of Rey; utterly determined and burning.

“Early this morning, the Senate convened in a hearing on Coruscant, and recognised the Resistance as an official branch of the remaining New Republic armed forces,” Rose says. She taps something out, and a holo pops up, playing silent footage in front of them. “This means that we’re no longer an unaffiliated fringe group, are now legally protected by intergalactic law as an emergency power, and also have access to mandated public funding for our destroyed craft and injured personnel.” There’s an enthusiastic smattering of applause, that she stops with an impatient expression. “Politically speaking, this is a huge success on the part of General Organa, Korr Sella, and other intelligence officials.”

Finn feels an indistinct stab of grief, and he turns to see Leia, with her head briefly bowed, before looking up again.

“However,” Rose says, and the video switches to another, showing a number of well-dressed senators smiling outwards towards them, unseeing, “from a strategic perspective, it means almost nothing. There is a massive power vacuum in the Senate, and many planets are fighting with each other to fill that position and take control. It is the perfect time for the First Order to either destabilise us further, or try to turn others against us.”

“How would they achieve that?” Poe asks, frowning. “They blew up five planets with a giant, illegal war machine.”

Rose tuts. “There are many who act against the New Republic’s ideals,” she replies, “and more still who act to profit under Snoke’s rule. Many more might simply be too afraid to turn against them, out of fear of massive and devastating repercussions. War can be expensive, or it can be profitable, depending what side you’re on, and the Republic has now been proven blind against the First Order threat.”

“The First Order aren’t politicians,” Finn finds himself saying, “and they would never bother trying. They won’t complicate things, they’ll just identify and manipulate senators they think will be the most useful, and then probably kill or intimidate the rest.”

“Did they teach you that in _stormtrooper school?_” Balis asks.

“Yes,” Finn says, “they also taught me what _respect _means.”

“Finn’s right,” Rose says, and Finn blinks in surprise. She blushes a little. “About the First Order. Our chance to sway systems to our side is to out-manoeuvre Snoke by doing what he won’t.”

“What’s that?” Ematt asks.

Leia smiles a wicked smile. “_Diplomacy.”_

There’s an odd ringing in his ears as the meeting ends, and he stays seated until Poe gently pulls him to his feet, keeping a hand at his waist.

“You doin’ okay?”

“Yeah.” Finn shakes himself and tries not to jar his injuries any more than he already has. “Yeah, just – it’s just a lot.”

“Sure,” Poe agrees easily, “but still, you did _great.”_

“Right,” Finn says, and puts effort into not feeling too pleased. It feels… weirdly good to hear it from him. “Right, but listen, what Leia said about Rey –”

“You two.” They turn, and find Leia standing beside them, arms folded. She points to her office. “With me, now.”

Finn follows on instinct, and Poe steps in beside him. The room is small, smaller than he would have expected from her, but there’s a reinforced skylight in the ceiling, and a number of sweet smelling plants in baskets, blooming in shades of red and purple and pink. Leia shuts the door behind them and walks around behind her desk. Statura, Ematt, and Rose are standing across from them.

“Are we in trouble?” Poe asks cheerfully.

Leia rolls her eyes.

“Optimistic as ever, Dameron,” Ematt says.

“Well thank you, General,” Poe replies, cracking a grin, “you know how important your approval is to my self-esteem.”

“Stay focused please, gentlemen,” Leia says coolly. Poe shuts his mouth. “There’s something else we need to discuss.”

“Without everyone else?” Finn asks, and Leia nods approvingly.

“Yes, this is better without an audience,” Leia says, and shifts until she can press a button, and they watch as a woman appears in front of them, tall and full of grace. “This is Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo,” Leia says, “our primary contact in the Senate and Core Worlds. She is a staunch traditionalist for the Republic, and has been working with a number of other senators to try and block the First Order from operating with the Banking Clan and the Trade Federation.”

“Luckily,” Rose says, “she was on Gatalenta during the Cataclysm, and survived the attack. Even luckier, she’s got access to intel on First Order movements.”

“Amilyn thinks that Snoke is going to deploy a number of high-ranked officials to start currying favour on Coruscant,” Leia says, “sooner rather than later. We also know that the Senate is currently stationed on Coruscant and housing a number of high-ranked and powerful planet leaders. It would be the perfect time for the to tip the tides against us. Still, moving in as a fleet would only encourage panic, and show our hand too soon. We have too little information to work on. We can’t risk igniting conflict on such a densely populated world. Instead, we have to send in a small team to do the work for us.”

“Oh no,” Poe says.

“Oh _yes_,” Leia replies.

“General,” Poe says, sounding pained, “I’ve barely recovered from the last time you sent me undercover –”

“Wait,” Finn says, stunned. The Core Worlds were the heart of the Republic, and far from D’Qar, and even _further_ from Rey. How could he help her if he was half a galaxy away? Meanwhile, Poe starts speaking over him.

“I’m no _use_ to the Resistance in hiding,” Poe insists, “I need to be here, with my squadron, with what little we _have_. What if the First Order decides to attack the base, and we’re not here? You said it yourself! We can’t afford to divide –”

“Commander Dameron.”

“But –”

“_Poe,”_ Leia almost snaps, “I’m not doing this because I _want_ to, I’m doing this because we _have to_, for our survival, and the survival of the Republic. You’re best pilot I have, and I know you can operate and execute an escape plan on your own without a co-pilot; Rose has worked in the Senate building on Coruscant before, and she’s spoken routinely with Amilyn and other senators; and Finn is our secret weapon.”

Finn almost chokes. “I’m the _what?”_

“You represent that what other systems fear is not to be feared,” Leia says, passion in her voice, “you represent that there is _hope_, for people subjugated and imprisoned, that there is an _after_, that they can remake themselves as good people who can do amazing things.” She reaches out, and presses her hand against his shoulder. Jolting warmth and profound _belief_ hits him, hard enough that he could fall if the strength of her conviction weren’t holding him in place. “Your existence is proof that the Light wins, that we can rise up and take back liberty and justice from the hands on those who would abuse it.” She gives him a little shake. “You represent _hope.”_

Her faith in him is crippling, and overwhelming, and bright, and loud.

“What about Rey?” He hears himself say. “I can’t just – you said she went off into the unknown on her own. I can’t just leave her alone, I can’t.”

“You want to _leave?”_ Rose says. She sounds furious. “How can you abandon us _now?_ Didn’t you hear what the General said? We _need_ you!”

“Hey,” Poe says, raising his arms in appeasement, “let’s all just calm –”

“My sister and I,” Rose says, “would _die _for this, just like you, Poe, and we’re seriously going to let people just _leave?”_

“Listen,” Poe says, almost angry, and there’s another weird feeling in his stomach that cancels out Rose’s fury, “if Finn choses to find his own path, he doesn’t need to justify it to us, alright? He has more reason to hate the First Order than almost anyone, so stop trying to –”

“What I’m asking from you,” Leia says, quietly, bringing Finn back to himself, “is a request, not an order. I know what you’re done for us already, for you’ve risked, what you’ve sacrificed. You carry it on your back. So, I trust you’ll make the right decision for _you_.” She lets him go, and steps back. “Just know,” she says, “that if you chose to stay, it won’t just be for you, or for us. It’ll be for Rey, too. We’ll give her something worth celebrating when she returns to us.”

The fear in him is so deep it’s in his bones, in his heart and lungs and blood. But looking at her, feeling her respect, and Poe’s trust, and Rose’s fury and, distantly, Rey’s fluttering light as she stands on a planet a million miles away, it is almost cleansed from him. Do it, he thinks, for Rey, for himself, so that when she comes back, Jedi Master at her side, he can tell her everything she missed, and the wonder of the Core. She’d probably enjoy making fun of how everyone dressed and what they ate, he knows, and that almost makes him smile. Finn furrows his eyes shut for a moment, and takes a deep, reassuring, breath.

“I’ll go,” he says, and his voice cracks all the way down the middle. “Yeah, I’ll – I’ll go, for her, and for you.”

Leia’s smile could outshine ten million suns.

“Was it a request for me, too?” Poe asks hopefully.

“Poe, you’re going whether you want to or not.”

—

Telon bows at her, as she exits the ship.

It’s a pleasant refresher from Kalen, who’s still whining to himself in the sanctity of his own head, and whose indignation hangs over him like a storm cloud. The _Supremacy_ is overwhelming in size and scale, but she doesn’t let her intimidation show, and instead strides after the aide, ignoring everything except for Talon, and the task before them.

“We haven’t seen him yet,” Telon is saying in his dreamy, unfocused voice, “not yet, but we can feel him in the Force. Angry, he is.”

“That wouldn’t be a surprise to you.” Or to anyone else. Kylo’s impatience was as infamous as it was deadly. “How long has he been conscious?”

“About sixteen standard hours,” Telon replies.

“Long enough for him to get good and worked up, then,” Sala says. She knows already; the ship is positively leaking Dark energy, petulant and uncontrolled and enraged. After the skittishness of the _Dominion_, it was welcomed and intoxicating. “Who else is here?”

“Martel, myself, and you,” Telon says, deliberately excluding Kalen as he walked behind them. There’s a snarl that they both ignore. “The twins are late, but they’re inbound, due very soon.”

“Assemble in my solar,” Sala orders, “I want a briefing before our audience with the Supreme Chancellor.”

“If time permits,” Telon says in a simpering voice, rife with dissent.

“It _will_,” Sala says, and pushes a little against him. Telon gives, just enough to be an acknowledgement. “Get it done.”

“Sir.” Telon dips on the edge of disrespect before sliding away, steps imperceptible beneath his long coat.

They turn down another corridor, this time entering a lift and standing in silence as they ascend. Kalen is suspiciously silent, something she can only attribute to being so close to Snoke, and so close to being in his disfavour; what they all fear most. She hasn’t spent much time here, not since they first fled the Republic and their old master, and as a child everything was terrifying, and new. It felt ready to crush her, like a fall from a great height would shatter a fragile egg. The doors open.

“Fucking _Chiss,”_ Kalen hisses finally, but she doesn’t stop her stride, and doesn’t acknowledge him. “I pray to the Force for the day his big eyes roll out of his thick skull.”

“Control yourself,” Sala snaps, “or the _Force_ won’t be what you need to pray too.”

He shuts up, briefly, until she has pushed her way through a number of upperdecksman, found her quarters, and let the entrance click shut behind them.

It is barebones and absent of personal effects, just like everything else, but the solar itself is a circular space with a large fixed light in the ceiling that can dim and lighten as she needs. Past the thin, white walls dividing it from her rooms, sits six chairs and a long, thin table spotted with burns and pockmarks. She has no attachment to this place and has carefully cultivated an absolute disinterest in everything here. It is much better, much safer, to remain unattached. When she enters, Martel is already sitting, saber pulled apart in his hands, and mask sitting on the table. His red hair is matted to his face with sweat, but his eyes and face are calm and devoid of emotion, as they always are. The saber slides back together with a quiet _schtick_, and he places it on the table and stands, tilting his head to her.

Finally, someone who’s competent.

“Captain,” Martel says in his deep voice. “I trust you had a pleasant return flight to the fleet.”

“As pleasant as it can be, fleeing from vermin,” Sala says, and pulls off her own helmet, resting it gently on the table. “It’s been too long.”

“Yes, sir.”

Kalen enters from behind her, pulling his head free and slamming the mask on the table. Neither she not Martel flinch, but Martel does give a slow, steady blink.

“Kalen,” Martel says, “contain your enthusiasm.”

“How about you go and f –”

The door slides open again, and Telon enters, followed by steps, perfectly in time, meaning that the twins have arrived. Martel goes to sit, dragging Kalen with him. Lain and Jadal pause in the doorway, the masks in their hands, and give her identical, flat stares, before bowing. Despite being human, they look clearly other; with bulging eyes and pallid, almost flaccid skin. The crawling, unsettling feeling they inspire whenever they’re in public makes Martel and Kalen shiver, but Sala refuses to let herself react, or hint any weakness.

“You’re late,” she says.

“_Yes, sir_,” they say in unison, “_of course, sir, but we just _couldn’t _get away.”_

“Tardiness is unbecoming of a Knight,” Kalen says from behind her. They only give him wide, innocent eyes.

_“We were burning the worlds,”_ they say, “_as we were ordered. We couldn’t leave until it was ash. Until we knew nothing could grow.”_

“I don’t care,” Sala says flatly, “for your banal and disingenuous chatter. Sit down and be quiet. We’re expected, soon.”

They do so, with some resistance, and Telon sits beside them, and removes his own mask. His skin was a similar shade to Kalen’s, but rather than yellow, his eyes were a piercing, discomforting red. Sala choses to remain standing.

“I’ll be brief,” she says, “we’ve all been away from the Order for too long, so some of you might have forgotten basic courtesy and respect that is expected from all of us.” She looks at them, Martel the only one seemingly unaffected. “You will not disrespect the Supreme Leader. You will not disrespect me, or your brothers, or our leader. You will not disrespect the Order, and our mission, and our allies. If you do,” she lets the moment hang, “I will kill you. If I catch that any of you, in your time in far space, might have doubts or lack conviction, I will kill you. We are close to the destruction of the Republic, of the Senate, and I will no longer tolerate your obstinance and rebellion. _Do you understand?”_

They don’t reply, but they all bow low and deep, so she picks up her masks and firmly puts it back on.

“Then we go,” she says. “We’re expected.”

Snoke’s Throne Room is the only show of colour on the _Supremacy_; instead of monochrome blacks and whites and hints of grey, the room is dominated by red. It’s everywhere; the walls, his robes, and the armour of his guards. They stand, impassive and motionless, as Sala and her men enter, but she can feel their eyes on her as they pass.

Snoke is reclined on the throne, fingers pressed together and leaning over a bent figure in front of him, the spot of black. Snoke looks up greedily as they drop to their knees at his feet, eyes on the floor, completely loyal. Through the darkened eye-slits, Sala risks a look to her left, and sees Kylo Ren, unmasked, for the first time in years.

He looks as though he just crawled from a fight; his eyes are deep set and bloodshot, and his hair has been shaved, close to his head and dark. It can’t hide the spots of thin lines across his cheeks and the back of his neck, but it is utterly powerless to disguise the thick, molten mark across his face, diagonally from his forehead and across the bridge of his nose to the corner of his mouth. It’s fresh enough to gleam, and she has to wonder if he was let out of the medbay willingly, or if he simply cleaved apart anyone who stood in his way. Probably the latter.

Snoke croaks out a laugh.

“My apprentice turns on his own allies,” he is saying in a raspy voice, “how typical from one who I have come to expect will disappoint me.”

“Master,” Kylo says, teeth gritted, “I have already proven myself to you.”

“You think so,” Snoke says, and his voice thickens, “I think you have too much weak blood in you.”

_“I killed Han Solo, and I would kill Organa if I had the chance.”_

There’s a part of Sala that jerks against her ribcage. She met Solo only once, in a childhood memory she choses to forget, as a tall man with bright eyes and a brighter smile. She shuts down that line of thought immediately, and hopes that Snoke didn’t sense that brief moment of weakness from her. He stands, and begins walking towards them in a slow, uncompromising pace.

“And look at the spoils of your _victory_,” Snoke says, voice dripping with contempt, “a military loss, a treason from our own forces, and a wound from a girl who had _never used a lightsaber in her life!”_

Kylo moves so fast that Sala almost misses it, but he stands, goes to strike Snoke, and is thrown bodily backwards by a spark of lightning. She hears the guards withdraw they weapons as she activates her own, holding the boiling red blade at the ready, with the others close behind her. The toxic clouds of power coming off Snoke are choking. He looks at them, and laughs again, an angry sound.

“How quickly they would die for you,” he says. “While you were off playing soldier, pretending to court the Dark Side and _pretending _to be a Sith, your Knights did as I asked them to without question, without mistakes.” The praise makes her shake. “I know what you are, _boy,”_ his voice changes again, guttural and low, “you can’t forget that you’re only _half Skywalker.”_

Kylo Ren is silent, simply stands perfectly still as the guards withdraw, assuming their stationary but tense positions behind the throne. Sala reluctantly deactivates her own weapon, and gestures to her men behind her. Snoke stares down at them.

“You want a chance to prove yourself,” he says, “and I want you to show that all my efforts haven’t been wasted on a child in a mask. You will go to Coruscant, and you will bring me the Senate, and you will make them kneel and beg in front of me, and then you will _crush them_.”

“The Senate will fight –”

“The Senate will do what they tell you to do, even you’re even a shadow of the man Vader was,” Snoke snarls at him. “Then, you will bring me Skywalker, and his little girl, and the stormtrooper, and you will broadcast them for the galaxy to see. I will see the universe _cleansed _of their defiant, useless _filth.”_

Kylo says nothing, does nothing, but Sala drops to her knees.

“Our orders, master,” she says, hoping her voice doesn’t tremble. His grin is wide enough to eat worlds.

“My sweet Sala,” he replies, “you will go to Coruscant, and you will find the rats, and you will burn them out, for me. Organa is a snake who allies on the council. We will find her and end her.” He spares a glance at Kylo. “Prove me right about you,” he says, “prove that you’re a loyal servant of the Dark Side.”

“Of course, master,” and bows so deep her head almost touches the floor, before he dismisses her. As they leave, she has to grab Kylo’s arm as Martel scoops his helmet off the floor, and they awkwardly half run out of the hall with him, as he stares blankly forward, eyes frothing with hate. She can hear their combined heartbeat, throbbing fast paced and out of synch, and completely terrified. She can’t see their faces, and for the first time thinks that it’s perhaps a good thing. Undoubtedly, none of them would be able to look each other in the eye if they saw how they looked now. Sala felt streams of cold sweat across her hairline and nose. They manage to reach the lift without incident when Kylo snaps suddenly, grabbing the mask and throwing it with enough Force that it shatters the walls, raining a shower of glass over them.

Sala protects herself, but just barely, and she sees a shard has sliced through the thin sleeve at Telon’s elbow. Kylo then raises a hand, it flying back into his grip, and he pulls it over his head.

“We leave for the Resistance base,” he snarls. “Prepare my ship.”

“No,” she says evenly, through her tight lips. “That wouldn’t be advised, my lord.”

She can hear his teeth grind beneath his helmet, and there’s a sudden, drowning wave of fury and overwhelming incompetence. She wishes she could see his face. Ren says nothing for a moment, as though to gather himself. Still, the tremble in his shoulders betrays him.

“I’ll notify the landing bay,” Telon says tremulously, “and they will prepare your transport, my lord.”

“_We will go with you,”_ say the twins as one, “_we will follow you, to destroy the New Republic.”_

He turns his head, the very smallest amount, to look at her, and she nods her head. He seems to shrug the load off, shake out his fingers and hands, before straightening and standing at his true, impressive height.

“We leave immediately,” he says, “and we won’t return until I’ve killed Skywalker myself.”

—

She is gone, and dead to the world.

In this distant void, everything is muted and still, and when she opens her eyes, she sees only her own reflection, spread out in front of her into an eternity. It doesn’t feel like drowning, although her hair and clothes float around her, held in some invisible grasp, and she seems to sink further into indistinction. She can’t see her own hands in front of her face. As she breathes in and out, this strange galaxy she floats in ripples ahead of her in spirals of coloured, overlapping circles. She finds herself thinking _did this kill me?_

_Is it over?_

She tips upside down, and the world changes with her. As she leans her head back, she sees that above her are swirling constellations, almost too bright to look at, that move as she blinks. Completing her rotation, the twilight before her stretches out into dusk and she sees shapes and figures moving in the gloom. Soon, as she falls, she moves to great them, and the peculiar space seemingly unfolds outwards into vibrant colour; red and blue and pitch.

She is standing on cobblestones in a distant world, with a crimson sky and binary moons. The long grass beside the path is lush and gleaming, and in the distance, there are bells. Bells, and the smell of smoke. She takes a step forward, then another, before everything changes and she is cast back into night. This time, flicking by so fast it makes her head spin, she sees a fallen temple collapsing into fire, a crowd of people running from a cracking earth, and the back of a First Order General walking through flame, blaster held ready to shoot. The smog is choking and thick but she pushes through, moving forward, until it clears and she finds herself on the deck of Star Destroyer, open and huge in front of her. She cannot be seen, because troopers march through her as she lingers stock still and awed and the size of the deck. TIE-Fighters soar overhead, through the barrier and out into space, some distant alarm ringing through her, tearing at her form until she turns and gasps, horrified. Rows and rows of children, all human, all young, dressed in all white, stand at attention with eyes looking right through her, utterly expressionless. Among them march ghostly figures in black, warped and unclear but throbbing in the Force, toxic and evil.

Then, from all around, a monster says:

_Do you follow us? Do you follow us? Do you forget all else, fight all else, punish all else, kill all else? Do you follow us? Do you follow us?_

Then there is a child alone, dark haired and kneeling, at the base of a great throne. She sees the bodies of children lying broken and mangled on wet sand, and the sound of many heavy boots walking on rock. She hears screaming, this time from a man, as he claws his way from the darkness but fails and is torn away into nothingness. Nothingness consumes him, until he is gone completely.

And she wakes, she wakes, and sees the _bodies._

Above her in the water, just below the surface, none she doesn’t recognise, but all in robes like Luke’s. They hang as though from cord, motionless and staring down at her with piercing, dead eyes. All of them, _all of them_, scream to her, until a child’s voice shatters the noise and asks in a high tone: _“why are you here? Did they send you down here too?”_

_“No?” _She replies, cautiously in a voice that isn’t hers. “_No? Where is this place? The bodies – what are the bodies?”_

The child, unclear but vivid before her with dark eyes and hair, holds something in his hands that he holds out towards her, before pressing it gently into her own. The lightsaber, warm in her grip, sings a sad, familiar song to her, and promptly breaks whatever vision she was held in.

Lastly, Rey realises: she’s drowning.

Also, she can’t swim.

Panic hits her next, and she holds the lightsaber in a white knuckled grip as she tries desperately to kick upwards, thrashing against the tide as it rolls around her, dragging her down and slamming her against the cliff, knocking what little air was left in her lungs. She gasps out, jarred and in pain, and suffocates immediately as salt fills her lungs and eyes and throat. She tries to scream, tries anything, tries to push or force herself to the surface somehow, but to no avail. Unconsciousness comes for her in black dots that crowd her vision, and a sobbing sound that the sea takes from her as she is consumed by the water. Just before she goes, she sees another darkened shape, long with wide wings, like the body of a sunken ship, and then –

_There is nothing, and she drifts, loose and untethered._

Until a something grabs her, hard, and pulls her up, up, past the brine and the foam until she hits solid rock, and a fountain is expelled from her lungs, leaving her coughing and spluttering and retching up seawater. She lays there, prone and gasping, blinking back salt and shuddering in the dark and cold, gooseflesh thick on her arms and legs. Her cloak is awkwardly draped over her, inexplicably dry, and as she brushes loose coils of hair from her face, she sees that the saber is still in her hand, hot to the touch, as though it had been live.

And sitting close by, is Luke.

Looking around, Rey sees they’re beneath the pit, on a small rocky outcropping protected from the surf by a curve in the cliffside. It is also a buffer for the wind, which is probably the only reason she isn’t freezing, she realises dully, her brain refusing to cooperate. It takes an eternity to force her fingers to unclench their death grip and slowly lever herself upright, trembling with the effort.

“You must be the only person in the galaxy who’d come to a water planet without knowing how to swim,” Luke says, sounding almost bewildered. His hood is down, and his hair barely moves in the breeze. She notices for the first time that his eyes look to be the same colour, if not very similar, to Anakin’s. “Did you never learn? Why did you never learn?”

Her teeth are chattering too hard to response, so she has to wrap her cloak around herself and breathe deeply a couple of times before responding. “I lived on Jakku. There’s not a lot of water on a _desert planet.”_

“Huh,” he only blinks on her, “from a desert planet? Strange.”

“Not _from _Jakku,” Rey says, “I _lived _there.”

“Huh,” he says again, “is there a difference?”

“_Yes,”_ she snaps.

There’s a silence where he looks almost amused.

“By that logic, I suppose I wasn’t _from _Tatooine.”

“Tatooine?” Rey asks, curious.

“Tatooine,” Luke confirms, “a desert planet, where I grew up, and my father before me. Not a lot of water there either.”

Rey hasn’t heard of Tatooine, and she says as much.

“That’s not surprising,” Luke says, “no one has very much to say about Tatooine aside from the bad, and it’s not a popular destination for anyone without something to hide.”

“Is that why you came here?” She asks, looking back to the ocean below them. “Because you wanted a change from the sand?”

His expression sours immediately, but he still doesn’t look as embittered and sad as he was when she first met him on the hillside.

“Not quite,” he says, in a quiet, rumbling voice, “no, unfortunately I didn’t have a lot of choices about where I would end up.”

“What does _that _mean?” Rey says, flatly. “I _know_ what it’s like to be trapped somewhere, to not have a choice, to be left behind. But I wasn’t a Jedi Master, I was a child, and I wasn’t running away from my problems!”

He doesn’t reply, just studies her very intently, and then drops his gaze back to the hilt in her hand, then back to her face. He stands easily and without sound, and approaches her, squatting next to her and straightening his robes with a little wave of his hand.

“What did you see?” He asks, “what did you see, in the water?”

“How – how did you know?” Rey says, “that pit – is it some sort of… Force magnet?”

Luke looks at her owlishly, and throws his head back in a laugh, rusty and hoarse. This sudden rush of amusement is the first thing she’s felt from him aside from cold indifference and despair. It takes some effort not to throw the lightsaber at him.

“Good guess,” Luke says finally, wiping at his eyes, “but no, not exactly.” He points above them, and she looks up past the stone to the grass snapping in the wind, and to the cloudy sky above that, now dotted with faint, pinpricks of light. “Can you feel it?”

Rey almost snaps back “_feel what?”,_ except she _can _feel it, has been able to feel it since before the Falcon first broke the atmosphere. That deep, thrumming _hum_, that’s everywhere from the paths to the water to the air to the little circle of stone stacked huts, and all around them, even now. It makes her heart beating in her chest feel louder and stronger, the hair on the back of her neck to stand on end and roasts her inside and out with a powerful song of longing from the stars that she wants to drink till dry. It seems to breathe. It feels _alive._

“I saw… I saw the First Order,” Rey says instead, “I saw children, and a burning temple, and a planet with a red sky. There was a voice – a voice telling me to follow, and a little boy.” She swallows hard, because thinking back, freed from its spell, she can’t help but think the boy is _familiar. “_The boy was – was Force sensitive, but I don’t know what –”

Luke raises a hand, and she cuts herself off. He shuts his eyes, and then gestures around them with both arms, as she watches, speckles of dust and tiny pebbles vibrate in time with the hum, and sends static feeling through her legs and fingertips, still pressed to the ground.

“Ach-To was a sacred planet to the first Jedi,” Luke tells her, rising into the air and pulling her along with him with only a tilt of his head. “It was a holy place, like Jedha and others in the galaxy, but left untouched by time and eventually forgotten by the Order.”

“Why?” Rey asks, “it doesn’t _feel_ like any planet I’ve ever been on.”

Not that she’d been to many, but still.

“That’s because it’s not.” They reach the empty, flat space beside the pit, and he places her gently on her feet, “you can feel it, can’t you? You saw what the water gave you, and you can hear its call. You’re Force Sensitive.”

“Yeah,” Rey says, “well no, I mean – I’ve never been trained.”

“One doesn’t have to be trained to know the Force,” Luke says, as though parroting someone else’s words, “and the island doesn’t care about self-imposed rules, it just knows who can hear its song, and gives you gifts in return.”

“Gifts?” Almost drowning was a weird gift, in her opinion.

“Visions,” Luke says, “powers beyond your normal capabilities, images of people we loved, and people we lost, truths that were hidden from us, and lies that deceived us. That is what you saw, when you fell.” He stops to consider this, before beginning to walk back up the hill. She hastily refastens the cloak, and follows. “I’m not surprised it’s reacting this way,” he says, “it’s been more… active, recently, like something woke it from a slumber.”

“Woke?” Rey says, confused, “how can you wake an uninhabited planet?”

“Sentient, intelligent beings don’t dictate _life_,” Luke says, and points at a Porg, that screams at him, “life is in the ground beneath us, in animals and trees and stones and birds. Look within, you already know the truth. The island has shown you so.”

Rey doesn’t really need to think about it, the words just come out of her: “Ach-To is _Force Sensitive_.”

Luke hums in agreement, and doesn’t stop, but grants her a faint smile from the corner of his eye.

“It is one, gigantic living organism,” Luke says after a minute of contemplation, “an organism with its own Force presence in the galaxy, that can manifest strange events and warnings from the past and future. That’s what the pit is; it’s just one aspect of how the island interacts with the Force.”

“How do you mean?” Rey asks, feeling distinctly overwhelmed.

“Everyone has a Light and Dark side,” Luke says, “and too much of one can be overwhelming and unbalance the cycle of life in the universe. The island acts as a microcosm of that concept. It was our mistake to think there can be only one or the other. One definite answer, one absolute side. It only makes sense that in practise, in a place like this, the island can exist with both working harmoniously with the other.” He points back down to the beach. “If the ocean were to sink the land, then the water would contaminate and thicken to slush. If the land were to devour the sea, the fish would die and the water would evaporate. Thus, exist as a push and pull, an ebb and flow, the coming and the going of the tides.”

Everything hurts, and the shock of her drowning seems to be hitting her at a delayed rate.

“But why _me?” _Rey asks, “these visions, they were calling to _me_, telling me things that I don’t understand.” She holds up the lightsaber to him again, and again he doesn’t take it. “When I touched this for the first time, I saw – I saw the forest, where I fought Kylo Ren before it happened, and I saw R2, and a corridor on a Destroyer. But this time, I don’t know, I just saw more of the First Order, and children, and pain. _What does it mean?”_

Luke just looks at her, like he’s lying, and gestures to the saber in her hand.

“That is a powerful artefact,” he says, “more than half a century old. It’s been used by many powerful Force users, for both the Light and the Dark, and carries its own Force imprint. It’s not a surprise that what you’re seeing, what you’re experiencing, are more traumatic and intense than regular Force visions.”

“But what do they _mean?”_ _And why do they hurt?_

Luke shrugs, face blank, but she _knows_ that there’s something he’s not telling her. _Be honest, _she wants to scream, at him, at Leia, at Maz, at _Han. Why won’t you tell me the truth?!_

“I can’t tell you what the visions mean,” Luke says, like a liar, “but I can tell you that they mean _something, _something _important, _for the war to come.”

“The boy I saw,” Rey says, “the one with the First Order – I couldn’t see his face, but I _knew_ him. I _knew _his presence, from outside the visions, from real life. He was Force Sensitive, so does that mean –”

“_I don’t know.”_

“Well if you _don’t _know, then you should come back with me, to the Resistance, so we can find out together!” Rey cries, “I don’t know what any of this means! I’ve only been having these dreams for a _week_, and they _hurt_, and I can’t control them, and I found Ren _once_ and Finn almost died and we need _help!”_

Luke turns away from her, for just a moment, and breathes so deep the world around them seems to inhale with him. He hides his face from her, his shoulders shake, and Rey briefly thinks that maybe he’s crying, or grieving something lost only to him. It passes as she trembles, the lightsaber humming and the planet humming and everything between them just vibrating with _noise_, noise and loss and promises and –

He turns back, and his eyes are clear and bright, and his mouth is set.

“I can’t help Leia, or the Resistance,” Luke says, “but you can, and I’ll show you how.”

**Author's Note:**

> i have a tumblr @ [gretahs](https://gretahs.tumblr.com/)  
if ur interested, the next update will be posted in three weeks
> 
> edit: accidentally posted the unbetaed version so @jesse blease don't kill me ive fixed it akslfjlkjf


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